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A retrospective look at the 13nth PERSEUS SEMINAR

The 13nth seminar took place on the 18nth and 19nth of January 2018 at Novotel in Massy Palaiseau . It was a huge success as also seen by a 30% increase in the number of participants with respect to last year’s seminar. The total number of participants was close to 250.

In his opening speech, Jérôme Vila, the deputy director of future missions at the CNES launchers headquarters (DLA), unveiled the “magic 5 challenge” . This new challenge’s quest is to: develop in 5 years, an experimental vehicle whose dry mass is 50kg , that can reach up to 5km in altitude using a liquid oxygen and methane as propellants to provide 500daN of thrust, and whose first stage shall be able to land vertically.

During the two days of the seminar, the students alongside the six PERSEUS friends from Europe (DLR, TU Dresden & DARE) and from overseas (Nextaero), have presented more than 40 presentations and exhibited their posters.

On the second day, Véronique Palatin, the deputy directress at the DLA presented awards to student teams for the following categories :

Best achievement award to CLC (Centrale Lyon Cosmos), for data exploitation during the flights of SERA1, SERA2 and SERA3. In fact the exploitation of measurements is an essential element in the analysis and recovery of the flight. Mastering the data exploitation allows for the reduction of margins and enables the perfect sizing of the next rocket.

Best teamwork award presented to the following associations for having realized the supersonic rocket SERA3 that was launched on April the 26th in 2017 from the ESRange base in Kiruna, Sweden: CLC (Ecole Centrale de Lyon), ISS (IPSA), Scube (ISAE) et OCTAVE (Université d’Evry). The PERSEUS project facilitated the collaboration of the students in the building of the demonstrator and during the launch campaign, including the exploitation of measurements obtained during the launch. Two important steps were taken, namely, the ignition of clustered engines (and the associated safeguard researches) and the increase in overall diameter from 160mm to 250mm.

Most innovative project award presented to S-Cube (ISAE Supaero) for the works that led to the definition of the skirt interface between the 250mm and the 160mm tube. For SERA3, a perforated aluminum structure was used because the works on the skirt interface had not yet been concluded. Fabrication was completed this year and the skirt was made from titanium using 3D printers. The skirt was exhibited to showcase its optimized mass, reinforcements on the bolt fixations and the pressure plugs.

For each of the 3 awards, 2 students were offered participation in the upcoming congresses in 2019, namely : the EUCASS in Madrid or the ESA rocket and balloon Symposium.

Furthermore, the best poster award was given to the ENSAM team from Lille for their work on the engine mount for the ASTREOS rocket.

Lastly, special honors were given to the S-Cube (ISAE-Supaéro) association for:

Realizing an electric system for measuring pressure in the demonstrators. In fact, each year, the system improves and its total number of sensors increases as well. This year, the system is also going to measure vibrations and shall be tested on the SERA4 rocket.

Calculating the degraded trajectories and their analysis, allowing the feedback of the backup files to be transmitted to SSC for the SERA3 campaign.